The psychopathology of everyday art: a quantitative Study - World ...

Content: 16 studies reported changes or signs in the themes, the subject matter or what
was represented. 43 patients (22 males and 21 females) were described 115 . 11 were
single case studies and the diagnostic groups were fairly evenly distributed. The studies
interpreted common themes in drawings by the same patient. They focus on two types
of information:
(1) the therapeutic effect of the treatment, and
(2) description of the characteristics of the subject's pictures and associations with the
diagnosis.
Table 4 (Appendix 2) summarises demographic, diagnostic, pictorial and interpreted
information.
How Art Promotes Therapy: The art therapist decodes and sometimes co-author a
private language, the complexity of which may provide a way of avoiding direct
confrontation with an emotive issue or at least distance. The interpretation thus also
becomes a product of both the therapist and the patient. The art begins as a device for
indirect communication until therapy ceases to be a non-verbal event. The therapeutic
value may be similar to desensitisation therapy in that it becomes easier to face the
underlying issue which is producing the psychological damage by repeated exposure to
analogues of it.
Are there consistently meaningful systematic signs in content of the art work?
115 2 studies (15 and 16) described paintings over many years in a variety of settings.
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